Tears were coursing down the older man’s cheeks and he dug in his pockets and came out with a battered yellow pack of American Spirit cigarettes. “Tell your mother about this and I will hit you,” he said, then lit the cigarette with a match.
“Dad—”
“Don’t,” his father said, raising a hand. “You’re my son, and having you was the best thing that ever happened to us. I understand where you’re coming from, and I know that’s a good place, but please, if you ever ask me to give up my own son again, I—I think I’ve already made enough threats of corporeal punishment, but to reiterate, I will knock your shit down. Pardon my French.”
Now John laughed, and it was a good feeling. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d really laughed. “I’d like to see you try,” he said when he was able.
His father drew on his Spirit and smiled. “Don’t poke the sleeping dragon, John.”
* * *
Feeling unsure and more like a phony than he ever had in his life, John opened the door to Katie’s room and stepped inside. Connie came in behind him and closed the door.
As before, Katie was asleep, curled on her side. In the dim sunlight filtering through the closed plantation blinds, John could see the girl shaking, and the dark circles of illness and fatigue beneath her closed eyes.
“What now?” Connie whispered.
“Got me,” John said, shaking his head. “Let’s just see what happens.”
Moving on tiptoes, they approached the bed and knelt down beside it. Katie made an unintelligible sound and then cuddled deeper into the covers. Connie reached out and stroked the girl’s hair back behind her ear, whispered, “Hello, my love.”
John closed his eyes and tried to find an inner calm, but all he could feel was fear. Fear for what would happen to this beautiful young girl if what he tried didn’t work, and fear for what might happen to all of them if it did.
He breathed slowly in, then out, trying to drop his shoulders down and release the tension he felt all over his body. Dimly, he could recall the heightening of the senses he had experienced just before touching Kyra Metheny and he tried to will the same thing now. But there was none of that. Just the sound of the clock on the wall, the labored breathing of the girl lying in front of him, the…the ticking of the grandfather clock in the living room downstairs.
And then, all at once, it came over him. His body relaxed and the pressure in his chest released. He opened his eyes, reached out, and took the girl’s hand.
This time, there was no explosion behind his eyes, no starburst of pain in his head. Only a slow, steady throb all over, in his arms, his legs, his spine. As he held on to Katie’s hand, the pain became agony and then grew into something new, something strange and alien, as if he were now sharing his body with another entity, crammed into a too-small skinsack with a vicious, murderous creature that wanted only to kill him.
John heard someone cry out and vaguely understood that the sound had come from him. The girl’s hand jerked from his grasp and he fell, felt his head hit something, and then there was, for a time, only black.
* * *
When he came to, his mother was sitting beside his bed, her head tilted back against the wall. He felt terrible, as if he were suffering from the worst case of flu he could imagine. Twice he tried to speak, but was unable. Finally, he found his voice and said, “Mom.”
His mother jerked awake and was instantly by his side. She put her hands on his face, felt his forehead, bent and kissed his burning skin. “Oh, dear God,” she said, revealing the Catholic upbringing that had never truly left her. “Are you okay, Johnny? How do you feel?”
“Like shit,” he whispered. “Katie?”
His mother tried to speak, but her voice eluded her. That was okay, though. John didn’t have to hear her words to know what she was already saying with her eyes. She clasped his hands in her own and smiled down at him through the tears on her cheeks.
“Good,” he whispered. Then he closed his eyes and fell back asleep.
Chapter 34
Mary Ann stood before her house, utterly exhausted, swaying unsteadily. Yellow police tape had been strung across the steps onto the modest porch, and more crisscrossed the front door in an X. The house looked empty and still and unlived in. Mary Ann supposed that was the truth.
Slowly, every step shooting bolts of pain into her knees and feet, Mary Ann started forward, across the lawn. Halfway to the front door, she stopped, stood still for a moment, and then collapsed to her knees in the grass, her head falling forward, her hair over her face. And she wept. She wept for Doug, and she wept for herself. Her hands, still in agony after her exploits in the hotel room, dug into the soft, moist grass, pulling handfuls of blades free, releasing them in crushed clumps.
All the way here, she had been anticipating this moment, not with eagerness but with dread. Returning to her house, to the home she had spent with Doug for so many years…finding his body removed, a dark stain spread over the floor where he’d lain, where Rose had killed him. Or, worse, finding his body still there, still early in the long cycle of decomposition, perhaps not smelling too badly, not so soon, but bloated with gas…
His dead body, eyes fixed, skin bloodless, had been the only thing she could think of as she walked away from the hotel where Rose had held her prisoner, her shoeless feet naked to tiny shards of rock and glass; the only thing she could think of as she walked mile after mile along darkened country roads, her feet cut and bleeding; the only thing she could think of as she finally arrived at an all-night truck stop and begged, wishing for tears but unable to bring them, for anyone to take her south, to take her home. One of the ten or so men sitting at the J shaped counter had indeed been traveling south and said he would take her, but not until the lone waitress had fed her a meal and cleaned the wounds on her hands and feet. After that, for a while, Mary Ann knew she had slept, and the trucker had only woken her once they’d arrived at the outskirts of Charlotte.
Slowly, slowly, Mary Ann got hold of herself. Wiping weakly at the tears on her cheeks, she looked up, back at the front door of her house, and prepared herself to go inside.
“Mary Anne?”
Her head snapped left, to where the voice had come from, sure it was Rose, that the woman had come back for her. Having killed John, she’d come back for Mary Ann; she should have known. But it wasn’t Rose. It was Hillary Lamb from next door, and she was running across the lawn toward Mary Ann, her long blond hair flying out behind her, her eyes wide and shocked. She fell to her knees and wrapped her arms around Mary Ann, pulled her into a tight embrace.
Mary Ann pulled back from the woman, said, “Doug—”
“None of us knew where you were,” Hillary said, cutting her short. “Doug’s at Northeast Medical Center in Concord.”
Not understanding, Mary Ann could only gape at her neighbor and shake her head slowly back and forth.
“Come on,” Hillary said and stood up. She helped Mary Ann to her feet and pulled her toward the house. “Let’s get you cleaned up. I’ll drive you.”
Mary Ann pulled away from the other woman. “Doug’s dead,” she whispered.
“No,” Hillary said softly, grasping Mary Ann by the upper arms, “hurt badly, but not dead. I heard yelling and called the police. The cops and paramedics got here five minutes later. He was bleeding and unconscious, but it looked worse than it was. He’s going to be okay.”
Comprehension dawned slowly on Mary Ann. Doug, alive. Not dead. It was like adding two and two and coming up with eight. Nothing made sense. Doug was dead. Doug was alive. Doug was at Northeast Medical Center in Concord.
“Take me now,” Mary Ann said, grasping Hillary’s hand and dragging the other woman toward her car. “Take me.”
And so Hillary did.
Chapter 35
The clock on the dashboard read 7:55 when Rose turned onto the gravel driveway and switched off the headlights of Phylum’s BMW. After a short debate, Rose had convinced him that she needed to
do this alone and Phylum had agreed to wait for her at the hotel. If she wasn’t back by morning, he was to assume her dead.
She pulled halfway down the driveway, then killed the car’s engine and climbed out of the car, wobbling a little as she stood. Although her wounds were healing rapidly, she was still weak. Too weak, she thought, to be attempting anything like an out-and-out assault on a house full of people. Phylum had said that she was a wolf, but a wolf was the last thing in the world she felt like tonight. A cub, maybe. A wounded, weak wolf cub. But that was okay. She wasn’t here to do any killing. Not tonight.
She walked slowly toward the house, sticking to the shadows cast by the various trees in the dooryard. All of the curtains were drawn, and behind them Rose could see only the suggestions of shapes, none of them moving. They were expecting her.
Suddenly, floodlights mounted to the outside of the house flicked on, bathing the yard in brilliant white light. Rose squinted against the light and raised her hand to block it.
There was an explosive blast and a cataclysm of pain engulfed her side and hip. Rose cried out and fell. Another shot rang out and she heard pellets tear into the tree behind her.
And then a tired-sounding voice. “Dad, no more!”
Rose scrabbled behind the tree and sat there, feeling warm blood leaking down her side and stomach and into the crotch of her jeans. Already weakened from Mary Ann’s attack, her body was unable to stop the bleeding. She would be dead in minutes.
“Hey!” the voice yelled again. “Come out where we can see you. We won’t shoot.”
She tried to speak and blood dribbled from her mouth. She spat it out and yelled, “How do I know you won’t?”
“You don’t,” the voice called, and in it Rose could hear a terrible fatigue, “but nobody here wants to kill anyone. I know it’s me you want. I just want to talk to you.”
Rolling onto her uninjured side, Rose pulled herself around the tree and into the open. Whether they shot her again or not, she was finished. She tossed the pistol that had been tucked into her jeans out into the yard and lay down on the grass, staring at the house.
Two men stood on the porch. Two other people crowded in the doorway behind them, a woman and a girl. Rose felt her eyes drifting closed and saw, for just a moment, the baby. She smiled and reached for it, wanting only to touch its hair, to smell its skin.
Violently, she shook awake and gasped for air. It was hard to breathe now. She worked her way into a sitting position, supporting her weight on her arms, and looked back toward the porch, where only one man was standing now, the barrel of the shotgun trained on her.
The man on the porch called out, “Johnny, be careful.”
“Hi,” a voice said from much closer. Rose looked up and saw a face emerging from the shadows. Or maybe not from the shadows. It was hard to see now. Everything was getting fuzzy and dim.
“Do you know who I am?” his disembodied face asked. It was closer, and she thought he was kneeling over her. She could make out his features. Brown hair, brown eyes. Like hers. He looked so tired, and even through the pain and the fear in her brain and gut, she felt sorry for him. Sorry for him because he was like her. Broken. Incomplete.
“Jo—” she started to say, but her mouth was full of blood again. She coughed and spat, then said, “John.”
“What’s your name?”
“Rose.”
And then—she couldn’t help it—Rose began to cry. She cried for everything she had done, for everything she had been compelled to do. She cried for the lost lives of children, for Mary Ann and her husband, and she cried for herself.
“It’s okay,” she heard a voice say from far, far away, and then she felt arms around her, holding her, and the feeling of warm comfort was like nothing she’d ever known.
Suddenly, without warning, there was bright light, light everywhere, and Rose felt the pain lessen, then disappear altogether. The last thing she saw was the baby, the beautiful baby, and then there was no more.
Epilogue
Kennett Square, Pennsylvania—Two Weeks Later
1
When he got out of the hospital, John decided to stay in Kennett Square for a few weeks. He no longer felt the fear and anxiety that had ruled his life for so long, and all he really wanted to do was read, eat, sleep, and spend time with the people he loved.
Connie had decided to stay on for a while, too. Over the time she had spent with Tim and Isabel Barron, they had become like parents to her, and John could tell that the affection was mutual.
Katie’s improvement was shocking. When Connie brought him home from Riddle Memorial Hospital, the first thing John saw was his father giving the girl a tractor ride around the back field, the girl laughing wildly as she bounced and jounced on the hard metal seat. John could see that his father was laughing along with her, and that did his heart as much good as the two weeks he’d spent recovering.
Connie helped John get his belongings—a couple of books and a few changes of clothes—inside, and then John went to the kitchen to say hello to his mother. She was cooking, and the whole house was redolent of caramelizing onions and garlic. When she turned and saw her son, a smile came to her face.
“My boy,” she whispered, drawing him into an embrace. “He’s home.”
“I am,” John said, hugging her back just as tightly as she held him. “I’m so sorry for all of this. I know it had to be horrible for you and Dad.”
She shook her head against his shoulder. “Nonsense,” she said. “This was no more your fault than the sun setting, or the changing of the seasons. You get over that, okay?”
“Okay,” he murmured into her hair. “I’ll try.”
After a while, his mother held John at arm’s length. “It’s all over, no?”
John nodded. “Looks like it. I tried this morning on a sick girl in the waiting room, but no dice. Really, though, I didn’t have to try. I just…feel different. I feel free.”
She smiled again, then her face darkened. “And the other one?”
Just moments after John had collapsed after grabbing hold of Rose’s hand, an enormous man none of them had ever seen before emerged from the thicket of trees at the mouth of the driveway and carried Rose off. Though John had been unconscious, his father was certain that he saw the woman breathing.
“We don’t have to worry about her,” John said. “All she wanted was what I wanted, and I think I gave it to her. I think I was able to give it to both of us.”
“And it nearly killed you,” she scolded. “I don’t know what you were thinking, Johnny. You were already so weak.”
He shrugged. “Either way, she has what she needed from me. Somehow, I got part of her, and she got part of me.”
She nodded. “Good. Now we can get down to business.”
He laughed. “What are you talking about, Mother?”
“Babies.”
There was a banging behind them and John turned to see Connie standing just inside the swinging screen door. “What babies?” she said.
John’s mother raised both eyebrows and shook her head. “If I have to answer that question, both of you need help.”
John blushed and slapped her lightly on the arm. “For god’s sake, woman. Connie, I need a beer.”
She smiled at him, and he could see color in her face, too. But not embarrassment. “A beer sounds good,” she said, then added, in a whisper, “for starters.”
For starters, John thought, following her outside, where a tin pail sat, overflowing with cans of Budweiser. It’s about time.
2
Baja California—One Year Later
Gabriel Corderman—Gabe to his few friends and Gabey the Baby to the seemingly endless succession of bullies who had haunted his days during middle and high school—had not come all the way to Todos Santos, a tiny fishing village not too far from Cabo san Lucas, to get his chops busted by rude American assholes. Not getting his chops busted by rude American assholes was, in actuality, the very reason he had chose
n to leave his small Iowan town of Millersberg at the first possible opportunity.
And yet here he was. And here again, for the fourth or fifth time this week, was the rude American asshole. That was all right, though. These kinds of people passed through. People who had come down to spend a couple weeks in Cabo and found the resort town a little too polished for their liking. So they rented a car, took a drive, made their way up the coast to see some of the real Mexico, or the slightly-less-unreal Mexico. These assholes, usually pretentious pricks from New York or Los Angeles or some such place, would stay until the rustic charm of Todos Santos wore off, usually no more than three days, and then scurry back off for the comfort of Cabo.
What made this particular situation different was that Gabriel felt it was very important not to let this particular asshole figure out how much of an asshole Gabriel thought he was, with his chronic under-tipping and marked unwillingness to say “Thank you.” Because this guy was scary. Not just big—though he was big—but hard-looking, the way Aryan brothers always look in prison movies. Gabriel could tell that the guy had tried to tone down the scariness factor by dressing for the climate in Bermuda shorts and a short-sleeve linen shirt, but the clothes did little to mask the creature wearing them.
With a sigh, Gabriel put the beer and the virgin daiquiri on a tray and headed back to the outside table where the asshole was sitting with the woman.
“Your beer,” he said, setting the bottle down in front of the man, whose eyes were hidden by reflective Aviator sunglasses, “and your daiquiri.” He set a cocktail napkin in front of the woman and placed the drink atop it. “Can I get either of you anything else?”